Incorrect payments
Julie Diphofa is back in the hot seat as acting CEO of the National Arts Council (NAC) after interim CEO Marion Mbina-Mthembu’s departure, the arts body announced on 19 August.
Mbina-Mthembu’s controversial departure came after Tshepo Mashiane, a former council member, took up the position of programme manager: capacity building.
A letter to the NAC from Mbina-Mthembu’s lawyers, which has seen, says the former council member had been appointed to an administrative position “despite the terms of a council resolution, which explicitly require the engagement of the Minister prior to appointment, not having been complied with”.
Mbina-Mthembu apparently tried to address the issue by writing to Mashiane a month ago, requesting him to resign. Mashiane, however, refused to do so.
According to the lawyers’ letter, legal counsel had advised the NAC that “launching an urgent application to attempt to set aside the appointment based on it being irregular would, given the circumstances of the matter, be a complex, expensive and extremely risky course of action to follow and would more likely be found against the NAC than in its favour.
“Given the risk that such proceedings would present, the point was made that the
CEO would be obliged in terms of section 64 of the PFMA [Public Finance Management Act] to report the matter to the Minister of Finance and the Auditor-General.”
Mbina-Mthembu apparently told the NAC that she would be reporting it to the Auditor-General and the finance minister to protect herself “from being the one who carries the can after I have left”. She declined to confirm to whether she had already reported the matter.
According to the letter, Sport, Arts and Culture Minister Nathi Mthethwa had said in an informal conversation that it was “undesirable” for a former council member who may have been privy to council decisions to then become employed at a management level in an entity over which he was supposed to provide control and oversight.
Mashiane’s attorneys said the NAC council did not state whether Mashiane would be reappointed once the irregularity of his appointment had been corrected and an amicable resolution was not possible.
“I don’t know why they are saying my appointment is irregular but I am still employed by the NAC. At the moment, I am working from home,” Mashiane said.
The NAC said it could not respond to any questions or provide details related to Mashiane’s appointment because the matter was under legal review.
Masechaba Khumalo, Mthethwa’s spokesperson, did not respond to queries.
The NAC came under fire from creatives last
year after it announced that it would renege on 613 contracts because the R300-million from the Presidential Employment Stimulus Package (Pesp) would not be enough to cover all the beneficiaries – 1,374 beneficiaries were set to benefit from the Pesp.
The announcement led to the National Arts Festival taking the NAC to court, while a month-long sit-in was staged by artists at the NAC’s Newtown offices.
There were also errors in the disbursement of the Pesp, with some beneficiaries not receiving the funding they were approved for. One artist, for example, was not paid R60,102 – a third of her funding – as it had been incorrectly paid to another beneficiary (who was not asked to account for how he had spent the money).
Mbina-Mthembu recommended that the entire process be reviewed and checks and balances, from operations to finance, be strengthened. “If these administrative errors are to be managed, the Pesp project team, including the senior project manager [and] the finance officers, need to be held accountable,” she said.
After last year’s poor handling of the Pesp disbursement, Mthethwa’s department launched a forensic investigation. At the time, then CEO Rosemary Mangope and chief financial officer Clifton Changfoot had been suspended, pending the investigation into the management of the Pesp.
The investigation found that five NAC council members had violated the National Arts Council Act by “enmeshing themselves in operations” and adjudicating applications for the Pesp.
Two of those council members, Michael Arendse and Thokozile Nogabe, resigned from council in February – three months after the investigative report was released.